Philosophy of Science in Practice (Philosophy of Science)Stephen John (4)

Wed 5pm (weeks 5–8)

Lent Term

History of Science and Medicine (History of Science)Jim Secord (9), Mary Brazelton (3)

Mon 5pm (weeks 1–8)Wed 5pm (weeks 1–4)

Philosophy of Physics (Philosophy of Science)Matt Farr (4)

Fri 5pm (weeks 1–4)

Philosophy of Social Science (Philosophy of Science)Anna Alexandrova (4)

Fri 5pm (weeks 5–8)

Philosophy of Medicine (Philosophy of Science)Jacob Stegenga (4)

Wed 5pm (weeks 5–8)

Easter Term

Science in East Asia (History of Science)Mary Brazelton (4)

Fri 5pm (weeks 1–4)

Philosophy of Biology (Philosophy of Science)Tim Lewens (4)

Mon 5pm (weeks 1–4)

Philosophy of Science in Practice (Philosophy of Science)Tim Lewens (3)

Wed 5pm (weeks 1–3)

Revision SessionTim Lewens (1)

Wed 5pm (week 4)

The Natural Sciences Triops Part IB course in History and Philosophy of Science offers a wide-ranging overview of the nature of science and its place in society. The course explores the historical, philosophical and social dimensions of the sciences, the ways in which the sciences are shaped by other aspects of social and economic life, and the roles of scientists in public debate. Examples are drawn from many different disciplines, over a period extending from the Renaissance to the present day: from early astronomy, alchemy and natural philosophy, to the atomic bomb, the discovery of DNA and climate change. We examine questions about how theories are tested and change, and about the nature of causation, laws and scientific explanation. The course also considers whether or not science provides an increasingly accurate account of a largely unobservable world.

History of Science

The history of the sciences asks about the ways in which different groups of people have found out about their world and how they organise this kind of exploration. The power and importance of science, technology and medicine in our own culture helps make this history significant. To understand what this importance means we need to know how it was achieved and how it changes. The way to understand how other people investigate nature is to try to look at their world from their point of view, a view often very different from our own. Until the end of the 18th century, Europeans organised their enquiry as natural philosophy, a means of understanding how God's creation worked and what it meant for humans' purposes and their fate.

The lectures start by treating the moment at the start of the 16th century when the religious unity of Christendom was broken and when new technologies in chemistry and navigation, printing and war, all began to change the world. The course traces the development of natural philosophy and its different forms of organisation as new models of the heavens and the Earth were developed, and as new maps of nature and of the body were drawn. The lectures extend their scope to the end of the 18th century, marked by dramatic industrial, political and disciplinary changes that helped transform the sciences. Much emphasis is placed on the way in which practices, maps, diagrams and instruments represented and helped to change natural knowledge, so the lectures are plentifully illustrated with original pictures and charts.

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed an unprecedented transformation of the sciences. New disciplines, such as physics, biology, geology and bacteriology took shape, now housed in palatial museums, modern hospitals and research laboratories. The 'scientist' emerged as a public figure, and European governments, expecting industrial and medical pay-offs, devoted ever more resources to scientific teaching and research. Darwinian evolution, the germ theory of disease and genetics extended the authority of the sciences to new domains, while relativity transformed explanations of the universe. These changes became even more apparent, and further entrenched, as the 20th century progressed. Physicists' participation in World War II raised them to heights of social and political power. Biologists equipped with ever more sophisticated instruments set out to explain life at the level of molecules. Technological systems – designed to support energy, communication, commerce – reached global spans. This trajectory alarmed many, and by century's end there were also new critiques of science and technology in play, with perhaps none more important than environmentalism. The lectures examine these and other changes, and place them in the wider history of industrial and political revolution. They explore the role of the sciences in religious, philosophical, and political debates, in social and technological change, in medical practice, and in the transformation of everyday life.

Introductory readings:

Bynum, William F., Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Science in East AsiaMary Brazelton (4 lectures, Easter Term)

These lectures will explore how people in modern East Asia – focusing on, but not exclusive to, China, Japan and Korea in the 19th and 20th centuries – sought to understand and organise knowledge about their world. Such narratives include a remarkable degree of exchange and encounters with new ideas, materials and people, as well as shifting definitions of what constituted 'science'. For instance, scholars and officials of China's Qing Dynasty investigated the ways in which useful and reliable knowledge could aid imperial administration and Chinese 'self-strengthening' against Western encroachments, while in Japan, the Meiji Restoration explicitly sought to adapt Western science and technology as part of an explicit project for modernization and industrialization, laying the foundations for an empire that reached across the Pacific world by the mid-20th century. The rise of Communism in China and North Korea made East Asia a critical sphere in the Cold War, and led to novel exchanges in science, technology and industry. The lectures relate histories of science and technology in East Asia to the broader historical narratives and approaches discussed in previous terms.

Introductory reading:

Elman, Benjamin, A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2006)

Philosophy of Science

What Is Science?Anna Alexandrova (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

What makes science better than, or at least different from, other systems of human thought? Is there such a thing as the scientific method? Is the development of science a linear, orderly and cumulative process, or an unpredictable sequence of changes? Karl Popper rejected empirical proof as the ideal of scientific knowledge, arguing that a genuine attempt to falsify one's own theories was the hallmark of the critical attitude essential to science. Imre Lakatos agreed but tempered Popper's falsificationism. In contrast, Thomas Kuhn regarded a dogmatic adherence to a paradigm as the hallmark of 'normal' science. Paul Feyerabend saw any attempts at specifying precise rules as futile, arguing that science progressed best when it was not constrained by any rigid notions about method. But perhaps science can be characterized not by a method but by a set of norms a community follows. We conclude by discussing feminist ideas about what these norms might be.

Introductory reading:

Chalmers, Alan, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 4th edition (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2013) or 2nd or 3rd edition

In this lecture course we look at the complex inter-relationships between scientific research and social values. We start by considering different accounts of the proper aims of science, asking how these accounts relate to practical problems around science funding. We then go on to consider the process of research, focusing in particular on two topics: ethical restrictions on permissible research, and whether non-epistemic values are required to close the gap between data and theory. In the third part of the course, we consider the use of science in practical domains such as medicine and policy-making, asking which kinds of evidence count as good bases for decision-making. Finally, we consider the broader question of why and when the public should trust scientists, and whether and how scientific institutions can facilitate such trust.

Philosophy of PhysicsMatt Farr (4 lectures, Lent Term)

Modern science gives us a picture of the world that is radically different from everyday conceptions. Elementary particles are probability distributions that will pass through two slits at the same time; what 'the same time' means is dependent on one's frame of reference; and so on. And the story keeps changing: elementary particles are now really fluctuating states of the quantum field; but what kind of ontology will we end up with if we can successfully synthesise quantum theory and general relativity? Meanwhile, chemists seem to get on very well with electron shells, orbitals and such things that are not supposed to exist according to fundamental physics. What does physical theory really imply about the nature of the world we live in? What are the methods by which scientists can learn about unobservable entities ranging from superstrings to the structure of the universe? And should we really believe the ever-changing theories that science gives us? We will examine these questions through a series of case studies in physics, chemistry, astronomy and other physical sciences.

Introductory reading:

Kosso, Peter, Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Philosophy of Social ScienceAnna Alexandrova (4 lectures, Lent Term)

Social sciences are enormously powerful in our society, especially with the recent drive for evidence-based policy. And yet they are enormously insecure. In this series of lectures we examine the long standing view that social sciences are distinct from natural sciences both because of the nature of its objects and because of the methodology appropriate to study them. Can there be a science of human beings? Do social sciences have laws? If not, can they still offer respectable explanations? Or perhaps we can only hope for post-hoc narratives that provide understanding without being able to predict or explain causally. Finally we examine the status of rational choice models used in economics.

Philosophy of MedicineJacob Stegenga (4 lectures, Lent Term)

Medicine is among our most important institutions. Though its aim is practical, medicine is shot through with conceptual commitments and theoretical assumptions, its basic tools rely on causal hypotheses supported to varying degrees by inductive inferences, and medical research is developed in a complex political and economic nexus. Thus medicine is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. This short course will examine three core topics in philosophy of medicine: the nature of disease, the evidential basis for assessing the effectiveness of treatments, and the political context of medical research.

Philosophy of BiologyTim Lewens (4 lectures, Easter Term)

This short course offers a brief glimpse of what it is like to study the philosophy of biology. It does so by covering two very different topics. We will begin by looking at how Darwin built his evidential case for evolution, and how the lessons learned for how data support hypotheses have relevance for the debate over the status of so-called 'intelligent design theory'. In the second half of the course we move on to ask what is meant by 'human nature'. Both biologists and philosophers of biology have disagreed about whether the very idea of the 'nature' of a species is one that is respectable in the light of evolutionary theory.

Introductory reading:

Sterelny, Kim, and Paul E. Griffiths, Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)